


Ruin

by prairiecrow



Series: Lethe's Curse [16]
Category: ReBoot (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Dreams, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Memory Alteration, Requited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2012-04-15
Packaged: 2017-11-03 17:35:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/384079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bob has a nightmare that brings to life his worst fears -- failure, helplessness, the death of what he loves most dearly. But it's only a dream... right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ruin

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Takes place on the world of Lethe, where Bob and Megabyte awoke stripped of their memories, formed an alliance of convenience — and found themselves, one day, profoundly physically changed. 2) This story is set after Megabyte succeeds in his bid to overthrow the Red King, and after he decides to go to war against the malevolent forces behind the Citadel of Memory. 3) A picture of Megabyte and Bob at this point in the chronology: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v189/crowdog66/lethebobmegabyte-1.jpg

_Consciousness returned on the slow thudding rhythm of Bob's pulse, driving relentless blades of pain into his brain and every muscle of his body with each heavy beat. He was_ cold _— so fucking cold that he could barely move, a chill that transcended flesh and blood and sank through to his core, permeating his spirit. Opening his eyes, he found himself lying face-down on a hard plane of rock bathed in the ruddy glow of the setting sun; he could hear the unmistakable sounds of armed combat, but they seemed far away, so he ignored them for the time being and concentrated on getting his head and shoulders off the heat-sapping ground._

_"Glitch," he managed to grind out as he got himself up on his elbows, "environmental scan!"_

_Silence from the normally communicative device. That had only happened once before — after the battle at the Moon Gate in I'vartalan, when Bob had ordered Glitch to transport himself, Megabyte and a score of sorcerers and warriors through the portal and thereby drained every erg of energy the keytool possessed. His heart sank even further. What the hell had happened? Why couldn't he —_

_A memory of a wild and desperate cry surfaced, a frantic command in his own voice:_ "Glitch, kill!" _An order he'd never given before in his remembered life, but the firewyrm, the firewyrm and its rider had landed and had disarmed —_

_Dread seized him, even colder than the stone he half-lay on, and he looked to his left, not really surprised when he saw the river of vibrant green life-blood that had run and dried across the wide ledge and pooled against the cliff face that rose toward the cloud-torn sky. Only one thing on Lethe was that precise colour: only one impossible, terrible thing, spilling from the alien body of the creature Bob loved too well._

_The winged monster had taken Megabyte's arm off with one bite, and was opening its razored mouth to sever the virus's head from his shoulders when Bob had given the order that had turned both it and the warrior astride it into red mist and acrid smoke on the winds of war. He'd had the satisfaction of knowing that he'd succeeded in preventing its lethal attack — but Megabyte had crumpled to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been suddenly cut, and Bob had…_

_His eyes followed the trail of viral blood to its source, and his heart, which had already felt pinned to the rocky ground, started falling toward the black reaches of the Underworld._

_…Bob hadn't gotten two steps toward his King and his lover before the rush of blackness in the aftermath of Glitch's massive expenditure of energy had claimed him as well._

_There was no one nearby now unless you counted the corpses of warriors fallen hours previous; perhaps the appearance of the firewyrm had made everyone else involved in the battle steer well clear of its last known location. Nobody was there to see as Bob half-crawled and half-scrambled to Megabyte's side to look down at his terrible stillness, at his head turned carelessly toward the field of battle and his remaining hand open like a fallen bird on the uncaring stone. The usual healthy gleam of his indigo and scarlet armour had faded to a duller gunmetal hue, and the slivers of his eyes that were visible bore no hint of light, only the opacity of ancient grey steel. The wound where his right arm had once been was dry and ragged, with no life-force left to spill._

_"No." It was a broken shard of a word, torn from Bob's dry and painful throat. He reached out a suddenly trembling hand and laid it on the virus's intact shoulder, curving his fingers around the angle where it met his extended neck, already knowing his plea was useless. "No," he repeated with more vehemence, "_ No! _", but Megabyte was well past caring about any argument Bob might have made._

_The Red King of Omalan, the Immortal Lord of the Enthralled, was dead — and Bob, his Champion and his beloved…_

_…was alone, now and forever._

_He picked up Megabyte's crested head and pulled it into his lap, and curved his arms and his body around it as a shield against the cold wind that heralded the coming darkness, and nobody was there to bear witness as he let the first keening wail of his rage and his grief slip free, or to hear his tearful whispered vows that he would take vengeance on the Citadel, a hundred lives for every drop of Megabyte's shed blood. He lifted the stiffly lifeless hand and wiped his eyes against the fingers that would never again touch him with tenderness or with severity, and he swore that when no more enemy warriors remained to pay the debt he would settle the final score with his own life. It was the least he could do, and all he could do, when the years that had once been so bright with promise and adventure now lay before him as an endless ordeal, every moment blighted with the knowledge of his failure, every breath and every heartbeat poisoned by the irrevocable loss of the other half of his spirit._

_And when the warriors of Omalan finally dared ascend to that lonely ledge and bear the body of their former leader down to the mourning multitudes Bob followed them at a little distance, ignoring their words of comfort and of reassurance, uncaring of their accusatory glances, already more than half a shade himself._

************************************************

But that had only been a dream, terrible though it was. This, Bob told himself, was reality: the most opulent apartment in the Red King's Court, silent in the small hours of the morning around an island of lamplight, and there, sitting at his great mahogany desk absorbed in reading three books at once and making notes in two more, was the Immortal Lord of Omalan himself, working late into the night as was his rather annoying habit.

Bob leaned against the post of the bedroom door and folded his arms and gazed at the virus for a long time, drinking in the living sight of him, the intensity of intellectual focus and graceful physical precision, until Megabyte decided to stop ignoring him and to glance up with an irritated expression and a pointedly polite question: "Can I help you, Guardian?"

The tone was so familiar, so layered with multiple meanings and degrees of threat, so _Megabyte_ , that Bob couldn't help but smile. "C'mon," he coaxed. "Come to bed."

A darker scowl and a stern inflection of that marvellous voice: "The N'varran Standards Treaty —"

"— can wait until morning." He pushed away from the door frame and crossed the room to lay his hands on those broad shoulders, the armour silky and brilliant and flawless to the only touch permitted such familiarity. "Come on, Megabyte. Please?" And then, in response to a more keenly querying gaze: "I… I miss you, that's all."

After a moment Bob knew, by the slightest unbending of the angle of Megabyte's draconic head, that he'd won. "You're in an uncharacteristically sentimental mood, aren't you?"

Bob sighed, and curved his hand around that strangely configured jaw and bent to kiss those lips that already bore the trace of an indulgent smile. "Maybe," he allowed, and took his lover to bed, and when their passion had burned away the last lingering scent of the illusory field of battle he fell deeply and deliciously asleep; and when he awoke the next morning, refreshed and in high spirits, he said nothing of his nightmare to Megabyte or to the Court's diviners. 

It had, after all, been only a dream… hadn't it?

THE END


End file.
